Examining patient safety education in pre-registration nursing curriculum: Qualitative study

Abstract

Background: Patient safety education has become an important tool to shape the future safety behaviour of health care professionals. The World Health Organisation has recently advocated eleven patient safety themes that need to be addressed in any health care educational curriculum. It is not known at this stage how far pre-registration adult nursing curriculum addresses these patient safety themes. Aims:To examine the views of nursing students and faculty members on patient safety education in a pre-registration adult nursing curriculum in relation to the WHO' patient safety themes. Method:Qualitative method, utilising 20 semi-structured interviews with pre-registration adult nursing students and faculty members (10 students and 10 faculty members). The data were analysed thematically.Findings: Three main themes emerged from the participants' views: 'Not explicitly linked to patient safety', 'Mismatch between theory and practice' and 'The role of the mentor in practice'. The power imbalance between the students and staff in clinical placement appeared to have rendered many students reluctant to challenge unsafe practice. Conclusion:Patient safety education needs to be more visibly taught in nursing education. The nursing curriculum' content, teaching and delivery methods may need to be reconsidered to better address the relevant WHO' patient safety themes, but also to accommodate the unique context of each nursing educational system.

The Effectiveness of a Course on Patient Safety Management on the Patient Safety Competencies by Final Year Bachelor of Nursing Students in the Netherlands

“…This results in a lack of knowledge and skills concerning patient safety [28]. Several authors state that nursing curricula therefore should be adjusted [10,26,27]. In essence, nursing students must learn the fundamentals of patient safety, learn how to prevent and handle adverse events from the very beginning of their nursing studies [6,10,25].…”

“…Embedding patient safety competencies in the current curriculum can be done by development of a particular course on patient safety wherein the emphasis is on the organization system and human factors, effective teamwork and optimal communication [6,10,23,24,[26][27][28]. Moreover, to appeal for a 'blame and shame free' culture it is essential to learn nursing students how to handle and prevent adverse events and to interference in reporting errors and coping with the fear of legal prosecution [3,6,9].…”

“…These environments should enhance learning form mistakes by analysing what happened to gain a full understanding of the encounter without triggering a judgmental behaviour [22]. In order to acquire a level of mastery on patient safety competencies, nursing education uses appropriate teaching methods to supply the fundamental components of patient safety [1,3,4,[8][9][10]27]. Patient safety is a part of daily practice, however, is not yet included in all nursing education curricula [3].…”

“…These instrument assesses four factors; willingness to disclose errors; recognitions and management of medical errors; the perceived interprofessional context, support and understanding for improving patient safety. Moreover, this instrument provides the opportunity to monitor the development of awareness, skills, and attitudes towards patient safety education [1,25,27].…”

Assessment of Educational Needs of Nursing Students for Improving Patient Safety

“…in 2011, WHo published a document titled Multiprofessional patient safety curriculum guide comprised of 11 major areas (9). it is a guide for all countries, cultures and contexts (10).…”